Brown Note: Difference between revisions

* This trope is the source of the common [[Fridge Logic]] expressed about how we know what deadly gases smell like ([[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|almonds, fresh hay, etc.]])

** Toxicity is relative; any toxin on earth is only deadly in sufficient quantities, and the quantities needed to ''smell it'' are often (but not always) miniscule enough to avoid injury. This is how [[Scarily Competent Tracker|Scarily Competent Trackers]] get away with trying to identify suspicious substances by "tasting" them.

** This prompted him to not release the album for 35 years and bury the original tracks in the vaults in a fit of panic, refusing to finish the album until 2004. Some other tracks of the original song were destroyed. Brian Wilson went into seclusion for decades, fearing that his hallucination-induced music would cause more fires. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LI-KazTKw8 Listen to it here].

* "The Elephant's Foot", a formation of reactor core lava in Chernobyl<ref>so-named because it is shaped like an [[Eldritch Abomination]], apparently.</ref> which was so radioactive, just ''looking at it'' [http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/bf822b7d3b8e.gif would kill you on the spot]. Like the classical Medusa, a heroic Russian physicist risked his life to [[To Hell and Back|journey into the bowels of the reactor]] to take pictures and find out what was going on down there; he had to use ''a mirror'' to take pictures of it from the adjoining hallway. Why did he "[[But Thou Must|volunteer]]" to do this? Because (a) he was [[Badass Grandpa|old enough not to worry]] about inevitably dying of cancer from background exposure (which he did later; [[Heroic Sacrifice|they all did]]) and (b) the robot they sent to take photos of the reactor core lava had its ''[[Phlebotinum Overload|circuits fried due to radiation]]'', while a human could move quickly through the same hallway as long as he did not look into the open doorway itself.